The year is 1936, and twenty-two-year-old history student Amelia "Mel" Hawkins—who's been tagging along on artifact-finding expeditions with her nonna since she could walk—can't pass up the opportunity to retrieve the priceless Amulet of Amun, hidden inside the Temple of Seti the First. Especially when she's getting paid to do it.

Armed only with her wits and her absentee-father's switchblade, she finds out the hard way that the man claiming to be the emissary from the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities is actually a member of the Thule Society, known as the God Men, sent to kill her and take the amulet for the growing German Third Reich. When he fails, she's forced to rely on the brilliant, brooding museum employee, Bes Belzoni, and his visually impaired cousin, Cecilio Giudice, to protect her and the amulet from the swarm of fascists hunting them down. Because it's no coincidence her guide was one of the God Men, or that more are after her.

Thrown into a deadly world of secrets and spy games, the three of them travel to the Italian Alps, where they run into trouble from the God Men and Mussolini's Blackshirts at every turn. But even her companions aren't what they seem: she quickly discovers that they're keeping secrets from her. Secrets so powerful they could change everything she thought she knew about her family, and uncover an ancient magic she never could've imagined.

With evil rising to power, Mel must make a choice: ignore the growing threat in the world and save herself, or take a stand against it before she loses everything she's come to love.